Qass___ _ 



Book. 



1_ 



EUGENICS, CIVICS 
AND ETHICS 

A LECTURE BY 
4* SIR CHARLES WALSTON 



4* 



CAMBRIDGE 1920 



EUGENICS, CIVICS AND ETHICS 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
C. F. CLAY, Manager 
LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 




NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 

BOMBAY \ 

CALCUTTA j. MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
MADRAS j 

TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF 

CANADA, Ltd. 
TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



EUGENICS, CIVICS 
AND ETHICS 



A Lecture delivered to the Summer School of 
Eugenics, Civics and Ethics on August Sth 3 
19 19, in the Arts School, Cambridge 

BY 

SIR CHARLES WALSTON 
(WALDSTEIN) 

M.A., Litt.D. Cantab. ; M.A., L.H.D. Col. Univ., New York ; 
Ph.D. Heidelberg 5 Hon. Litt.D. Trin. Coll., Dublin 5 Fellow 

of King's College, Cambridge 
Sometime Slade Professor of Fine Art in the University of 
Cambridge, England, and Director of the American School 

of Classical Studies, Athens 
(Author of Aristodemocracy etc., Patriotism etc., Truth etc., 
The English-Speaking Brotherhood and the League of Nations, 
etc., etc., etc.) 



CAMBRIDGE 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1920 



EUGENICS, CIVICS AND ETHICS 



I HAVE one or two personal remarks 
to make. I may be obliged to refer 
to and quote some of my own writings. 
I beg you to understand that it is not from 
egotism or vanity. We very often find 
that we can save time, and be more ac- 
curate, when we read what we have 
written than in an extempore speech ; 
moreover the fact of having published 
our views in earlier times and from a dif- 
ferent angle and point of view is more or 
less confirmatory of the truth of our pre- 
sent opinions. I wish to make another 
half-personal remark, leading to what I 
intend to say this evening. It concerns 
something the Chairman has just said in 
short and very telling words — namely, as 
to the advantage of such a synthesis as I 
propose to give to you. When my lecture 
was announced to you yesterday at the 

5 



end of the very interesting lecture of Mr 
Farquharson, at which I was present, I 
saw a gesture from one of your class which 
was something of this nature. You may 
perhaps guess what it meant. I sympa- 
thise with it. It meant: " Good God, what 
a generalisation ! We might as well have 
a lecture on this life, the after-life, im- 
mortality of the soul, practical truth and 
religion, all in one. What a field for 
tremendous generalisations it will give, 
and what nonsense the lecturer will pro- 
bably talk ! " I think the member of the 
class who made that gesture-protest was 
justified ; because generalisation, wide and 
sweeping, is very easy, very amateurish 
and, as a rule, very misleading and un- 
scientific. But we must remember what 
our Chairman has just indicated : that 
true science, the most thorough science, 
has two aspects always — the analytic and 
the synthetic. The analytic deals with 
the single data, the single facts ; the syn- 
thetic joins those single facts together 
and discovers the correlation of all facts, 
of all disciplines, leading to that final unity 
of goal which is called Truth. 

6 



That is what I have to deal with to- 
night — the synthetic side. And I say, 
that we shall be just as scientific if we 
centralise our vision, carefully making 
our induction of facts on a wider macro- 
scopic scale, as when we do this micro- 
scopically. A traveller, if he wishes to 
advance securely, ought to look carefully 
before him step by step. But if he has 
an aim — a further aim — he must see the 
goal and make for that : he will know 
that he is not walking round and round, 
but going in the right direction. That 
is the true aim of science. 

I will not waste time with definitions 
of eugenics, civics and ethics. We all 
know the province, aims and methods of 
these studies — or think we do. Eugenics, 
I must remind you, however, is not iden- 
tical with genetics : this at once establishes 
the essential relation to civics and ethics, 
which is the subject of my lecture this 
evening. 

I have loved horses all my life ; and, 
from loving them as an amateur, I studied 
them zoologically, biologically, and mor- 
phologically. The study of the hoof of 

7 



the horse, for instance — its fingers or 
toes, show there are undoubted traces of 
them having been separate once— inter- 
ested me as an amateur (meaning a 'lover,' 
but not a dabbler) . Those two things are 
not identical. From that study I came 
to try breeding. As you know, there are 
various classes of horses : there are cart- 
horses, carriage-horses, race-horses, hacks, 
hunters, etc. I specialised on the hunter. 
The difference in classification between 
these several classes of horses depends on 
the nature or purpose which in domestic 
life they fulfil — I need not dwell upon it. 
You will recognise that the cart-horse 
must be different in structure and breed 
from the race-horse or the hunter. Now, I 
found that the hunter must be fairly high, 
that his back must be strong and short, 
because he has got to jump and carry 
weight at the same time. He must have 
well-developed hips — some good hunters 
even have ugly, so-called " ragged," hips ; 
he must have a good sloping shoulder, 
because he must lift his forelegs and raise 
them rapidly, and when he falls he must 
rise easily and quickly and, in general, 

8 



propel forward in a gallop. So also his 
hind-quarters must be high and strong, 
not sloping and weak; and his hocks must 
be especially strong to ensure his jump- 
ing power and speed in galloping. All 
these qualities — the definite purpose of 
their use to individual man — must direct 
the selection of the breeder of hunters. 
But it occurred to me at an early date to 
ask : "Why do not breeders consider 
what may be called the ethical or moral 
conditions ? " I say the hunter must have 
a certain temperament — a good heart- 
courage — and, not only that, but a good 
temper, because, if he has got only heart 
and courage, he will rush his fences, will 
be too hot ; you will not be able to steady 
him and, in jumping, he will land you 
in the ditch. I therefore endeavoured 
to introduce this question of temper— 
of, what I might be allowed to call, moral 
character — into the selection for breeding 
purposes — a point almost entirely ignored 
by practical breeders. It is true that 
extreme and manifest forms of vicious 
temper may affect the choice of a sire 
by breeders of race-horses, in fact most 



9 



horses. A "savage" or uncertain-tem- 
pered horse will not be so readily chosen 
by the breeder of race-horses, for his 
temper may make him unmanageable 
and thus lose a race. But I doubt whether 
the consideration of such moral proper- 
ties in breeding goes any further than 
this. I think this illustration will suffice 
to show you that I wished to introduce 
into breeding the principle of selection 
and not merely "natural" nor merely 
selection on anatomical or physiological 
grounds ; but selection based upon the 
human purpose and aim — which I might 
call moral selection. 

Now, domestic animals are not in an 
untamed state of nature. What this simple 
fact implies I wish to commend to you 
to think out for yourselves. The moment 
the step is made from the natural state to 
the domestic animal, a curious paradox 
results. Science deals, and ought to deal, 
with pure causality, not with the end, 
not with the purpose, not with Teleology. 
This is eminently so in all natural and 
physical sciences. It is so in Genetics. 
But when we come to Eugenics, even 

10 



when we make the step to domestic 
animals, and still more so when we as- 
cend to man, we must be teleological. 
What was pure causality, necessity, may 
become in our eyes more or less accidental 
— chance (which we wish to eliminate) 
— and our desire and purpose is to estab- 
lish our design as a necessary law, as the 
logical sequence of cause and effect in 
which some moral purpose or design is 
the ultimate cause. 

My friend, Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, 
has carried on an interesting controversy 
in palaeontology on the question of 
eoliths. The controversy turns on the 
question, whether certain small stones in 
which a peculiar regularity is clearly no- 
ticeable, corresponding to the stone or 
flint implements with which the Neoli- 
thic period, and also the later Palaeolithic 
periods, have familiarised us — whether 
these stones, dating back to the earliest 
Palaeolithic period, were deliberately 
made or selected by man for such pur- 
poses of use, or whether their purposeful 
regularity is due to merely natural causes 
— whether they are accidents or, what 

1 1 



we might almost call, " freaks of nature." 
In a shorter form the question is : Are 
they artifacts to which man has given 
this form, or is the form due to natural 
causes ? You will understand that if they 
are artifacts the cause in the existence of 
that form is the human purpose or end ; 
but if they were produced by nature 
their striking and useful form is excep- 
tional and may be called by us an acci- 
dent. Now, I must repeat to you that 
the moment the study of Genetics takes 
the form of Eugenics in man, the moral 
purpose, in differentiation from the 
natural factors of evolution, becomes an 
essential cause in the production or modi- 
fication of the individual and the type. 

The evolution out of which established 
forms of nature arose was studied with 
the greatest benefit to science and to us 
by Charles Darwin : he is the great 
founder. Whatever modifications may 
have been introduced by Weissman, 
Mendel, De Fries and others, the general 
principles of evolution, I believe — as I 
am told by my betters in these matters 
— the fundamental principles, will remain. 



12 



But with Darwin these principles were 
not absolutely and directly applied to 
moral properties and characters in man 
and to social life. On the contrary, in 
my reading of the works of Darwin I 
remember passages in w T hich, more than 
once, he points to the " immorality 55 of 
nature. But moral writers have applied 
— or rather misapplied — Darwin's prin- 
ciples to ethics, and even to politics and 
civics. One of the greatest sinners in 
this respect — a genius — was Nietzsche. 
I may here quote what I published in my 
book Aristodemocracy — From the Great 
War back to Moses, Christ and Plato 
(John Murray, 1917), pp. 190 — 193 : 

But the main question as regards the practical ethics 
of Nietzsche is how the superman is to be produced; 
not he who is to obey and follow, but he who is to 
command and lead. It is here that, to my mind, the 
whole theory of Nietzsche's superman fails, I venture 
to surmise, because of a complete misapprehension of 
the Darwinian theory of evolution, and its misplaced 
and crude application to ethics. The Darwinian theory 
of evolution, which, I repeat, was emphatically not 
meant to be teleological, but strictly causal, simply 
accounted for the survival of the fittest in nature's 
great struggle for existence, chiefly through adapta- 
tion of the organism to its environment. Darwin 
himself repeatedly points out the unethical, if not 



13 



immoral, cruelty of nature in this process. Bacon took 
quite a different point of view when he upheld the 
great aim of man placed in nature as the establishment 
of the Regnum Hominis, the reasoned victory of man 
over the unreasoned course of nature. But Darwin 
deals with no such prospect of man's activity, and is 
simply concerned with the natural progress arising out 
of such an adaptive principle which leads to the sur- 
vival of the fittest. From man's point of view, how- 
ever, if he wishes consciously to apply the principle of 
the adaptation to the environment, there is no chance 
of advancement or progress unless the environment 
itself, as, if I might say so, almost a planetary body, 
advances. For man may adapt himself to physical 
conditions that are "lower" instead of "higher." As 
a matter of fact a good deal of the political and social 
ethics of our own days is nothing more nor less than 
this ethical opportunism, of adaptation of man's life 
to the surrounding conditions of nature, the final goal 
of which is merely physical subsistence or at most 
increase of comfort. In one aspect of his powerful 
writings Nietzsche fulminates against this ideal of 
comfort. We are thus in a vicious circle if we apply 
the Darwinian principle of evolution direct to ethical 
principles. Our only hope would be in a fatalistic 
renunciation as regards all ethical progress, in which 
we hope that the environing nature itself may " im- 
prove"; so that by adapting himself to his environ- 
ment man himself may improve and ultimately rise to 
greater heights of human existence. For Nietzsche's 
superman, however, this environment does not only 
consist in the physical conditions in which the human 
animal finds himself living and by which he is sur- 
rounded ; but in the physical conditions of man's own 
body and his own instincts, his inner force of living. 



14 



These are to guide him. He is to follow these as his 
true friends and to deny them no claims which they 
may press upon his conscious will. They must really 
become the "environment" to the central personality 
of the individual, which we may call soul, spirit, or 
whatever else we like. But here again we are placed 
in the vicious circle, though a circle one step higher 
than, or perhaps only nearer to, the central core of 
individual man. For we can hardly see how mere 
physical health by itself or the following of our indi- 
vidual instincts and passions can ensure progress and 
lead us to the true superman, unless we can assume 
that these instincts and passions themselves and in 
themselves "improve" and go to the making of the 
superman 1 . 

On the contrary, not only the unbiassed study of 
anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, and history, 
but also our daily experience of life, teach us that 
the pursuit of our instincts and passions, unrestricted 
and unhampered by any further consideration or guid- 
ing principle, leads, not only to the misery, if not the 
destruction, of other individual life ; but in no way 
produces the type which approaches the conception 
of even the meanest imagination of what a superman 
ought to be. Nietzsche apparently has forgotten or 
ignored (excellent Greek scholar though he was) the 
simple statement of Aristotle that man is a £e3oi> tto- 
\ltlkov. Were each man completely isolated and 
destined to live the life of an absolute anchorite, with- 

1 I may at once anticipate here, what will be dealt with 
in the course of this inquiry, and say, that only when 
idealism is called in to supplement evolutionism, when Plato 
and Aristotle — or rather Plato and Darwin — are recon- 
ciled and united, can the theory of evolution be applied 
to ethics. 



15 



out any relationship to other men, it might perhaps 
be maintained that his chief task would then be to 
adapt himself to his environment, which includes his 
body and his instincts. But even then — as I shall 
have occasion to show — there is a point of view from 
which this would be grossly immoral, if not grossly 
untrue to human nature as such. 

I have tried in this work to show what 
the superman theory may do. The result 
in practical life is the establishment of 
the type of the "blond beast " — and we 
know what the "blond beast" has led to 
and how with the German nation it has 
produced ideals and aims, unsocial and 
immoral, which, thank God!, did not win 
the day. We won this war because we 
were right, and the whole world knew it. 
Ultimately we must have won, however 
long it might have taken. Another mis- 
application of the still very hypothetical 
results of Ethnological studies — of which 
it might be well for Mendelians and 
Eugenists to take note — is furnished by a 
recent book by Mr Madison Grant, T. he 
Passing of the Great Race. I must here 
again quote what I have already published 
{Patriotism — National and International, 
Longmans, Green & Co., 1917, pp. 98 — 

16 



ioo) and must give my estimate of Mr 
Grant's book, which, I regret to say, takes 
the form of direct and unmitigated attack 
(a practice in which I have hardly ever in- 
dulged in my literary career), because I 
am fully convinced of the demoralising 
effect on the scientific spirit of such 
generalisation, as well as of the directly 
mischievous influence of its application 
to practical politics and social life : 

The principles of racial subdivision for Europe 
to-day are the Nordic, Mediterranean and Alpine. 
Militant activity now chiefly centres round the pro- 
position that the Nordic is the superior race and 
should as a race not only survive, but dominate all 
others. 

From the interesting, and comparatively innocent, 
essay of Count Gobineau, with many minor lucu- 
brations, we come to the grotesquely pretentious, 
superficial and tragically mischievous work of Mr 
Houston Chamberlain, the fatal influence of which I 
have indicated elsewhere (see Aristodemocracy, p. 53). 
Its influence on the inception of the present war, as 
regards the development of the present political 
mentality of Germany, can hardly be exaggerated. 
A correspondent and friend, commenting on this 
opinion of mine, has humorously suggested that, 
should (as we trust) the war end in the utter over- 
throw of German militarism, the defeated Germans 
will maintain that the real responsibility of this world- 
tragedy is to be ascribed to the fact that they were 



w. 



b 



misled by the writings of an Englishman whom they 
will, in their legal phraseology, describe as the Intel- 
lectueller Urheber. Our own days have witnessed the 
production of a work by an American would-be 
ethnographer and historian 1 , supported in an intro- 
duction by a well-established and distinguished zoolo- 
gist and biologist, which is the most amateurish as well 
as pretentious piece of scientific over-generalisation, 
incomplete induction and dogmatic application of 
scientific principles to practxal politics and life, which 
I have met with in the whole range of my own 
reading. Starting with the proposition that somatic 
(bodily or physical) characteristics and distinctions in 
the human race correspond with unvarying interac- 
tion to intellectual and moral characteristics — even to 
fitness for political organisation, general activities and 
occupations in civilised life, intellectual achievements 
and social amenities — he endeavours to show that the 
Nordic race, compared to all others, possesses all the 
qualities that make for civilisation and moral and 
intellectual development to the highest degree. He 
maintains that the wars of the past and the present 
war have tended to disintegrate this race and to lead 
to its submersion by the lower races, and his expressed 
hope and emphatic injunction is that, by the action 
of modern society and of the individual, it should be 
preserved and its dominance assured. The definition 
of the Nordic race by means of somatic attributes is 
limited to the combination of the dolicho-cephalic 
shape of the head (though he denies the definite dis- 
tinctive racial claim to this craniological attribute), the 
possession of light eyes, fair or red hair (including pro- 

1 The Passing of the Great Race, by Madison Grant. Chas. 
Scribner, N.Y., 191 6. 

18 



fusion of hair on head and body), straight nose and a 
tall muscular body. On such grounds of ethnological 
distinction he proceeds to write the u political and 
social history of Europe," nay, of the world, in a few 
pages. This war has confirmed us in deploring the 
work of many historians of note, whose patient 
research into the documents of the past and whose 
critical sincerity and acumen have been vitiated by 
their personal and political bias and by " patriotic 
passion," all made still more disastrously effective 
in filtering through the history school-books, where 
young M patriots " are brought up to hate and to de- 
spise their actual or potential national enemies. But 
if history is to be written in the spirit of Mr Grant's 
ethnological generalisation, and if the American 
people are to be trained to keep separate and pure 
the tall, light or red-haired, long-headed, blue-eyed 
and straight-nosed inhabitants from contamination 
with the rest, instead of concentrating the efforts of 
their citizens on the maintenance of the spirit of their 
constitution and the realisation of the highest ideals 
of mankind (this object by itself absorbing all the 
energies left them after having earned an honest 
livelihood), it will be a sad day for the people of 
the United States and for the development of the 
American nation and its position in civilised hu- 
manity. 

Now, Galton held that moral, as well 
as physical, qualities may be transmitted 
— but surely only through their physical 
concomitants. We know of the resem- 
blance of children to parents. But it is 
most important for eugenists to remember 



that resemblance can never mean identity 
and that the human body, and still more 
the human character and mind, are com- 
posed of an infinite number of attributes 
and an infinite number of combinations 
in these attributes which go to the pro- 
duction of individuality and personality, 
and that we can never hope for the re- 
production of identical units or types and 
only for broader resemblances. But we 
are justified in asking, "If children in- 
herit similar or almost identical noses, 
why not similar brains, nerve-centres and 
cells, ganglia — the whole man?" For 
a great many years I have been interested 
in the different types of walks ; I have 
made many careful notes, not hastily 
arrived at. Walks indicate character to 
a marvellous degree. You will find that 
the walk of the energetic man differs 
from that of the slothful, the ambitious 
and vain from that of the unambi tious and 
humble. It is a most interesting study. 
Well, if that be so even in the case of 
a walk, why not with character and tem- 
perament ? As I mentioned before, a 
good hunter must have the right tempera- 
20 



ment, a good "heart," which he inherits 
from his progenitors. The same applies 
to human beings. We may inherit our 
temperament which makes us energetic, 
passionate, courageous, emotional, full- 
blooded and warm-blooded and emotional 
or anaemic and fish-blooded, lethargical 
or cowardly. But whether the fortunate 
individual who inherits such a warm- 
blooded temperament, energy and courage 
— what Plato called to dvfjLoeiles — will 
turn this priceless emotive capital into 
those social qualities which will make 
him a great general, a martyred leader of 
thought and religion, a bold reformer and 
philanthropist, or a fearless burglar, pirate 
or anarchist, depends upon his earliest 
training and surroundings from infancy 
upwards, which by the forces of environ- 
ment, by education, and by the constant 
repercussion of habituation, subconscious 
as well as conscious, give social direction 
to this inherited temperament. 

Eugenics is quite safe and can hardly 
ever go wrong in combating pathological 
conditions, diseased bodies, which are 
transmitted to the human being and off- 



21 



spring and lower the vitality of a race. 
Beyond this negative aspect it can im- 
prove collectively and individually the 
physical condition, all those physical 
properties which tend to secure a healthy 
body and a healthy mind to the race. 
But let us take heed that by the exclusive 
pursuit of these aims we do not arrive at 
the ideal of the " blond beast." You may 
have done what genetics advises, but the 
"eu" part of eugenics remains, and this 
is the most important part in the end. 
What is your best man ? What is the 
type? For an answer to this question 
the Eugenist must turn to the student of 
Civics and the student of Ethics. 

In this summer school of ours we are 
studying in Civics the development of 
social man. We are dealing with the 
corporate individual, the evolution of 
associations, corporate forms, the State, 
shop-work, philanthropic and other or- 
ganisations. We must study the past, 
the sociological and historical aspects of 
society, causes which underlie its evolu- 
tion ; the broadest influence of physical 

22 



surroundings — social geography — the 
origin of natural traditions, of work and 
purpose. We must further study the 
nature and origins of the institutions and 
associations which man has evolved and 
the relation of the individual to these 
institutions. Above all, among these 
social associations, we must study the 
political organisations, the State and its 
government, imperial, national and local. 

But I wish here to insist upon the 
fact that all these civic studies and civic 
aims depend finally upon what indi- 
vidual man is and what he ought to 
be. Civics ultimately depends upon 
Ethics, however useful it may be for 
the researcher as well as the teacher to 
separate, for the time being, these two 
branches of theoretical and practical 
work. But for the thorough study of 
Civics, as well as of international politics, 
we ultimately depend upon our know- 
ledge and appreciation of the character 
of individual man, on his ethical nature 
and the ethical standards of his individual 
life. I may again be allowed to illus- 
trate my meaning by giving here what I 
have recently written in a forthcoming 

23 



book on "The League of Nations 1 " and 



political and international conditions 
favourable to the establishment of such 
a league : 

In fine I must admit, and it may be rightly urged, 
that all principles of social and political betterment to 
secure the peace of the world and the progress of civi- 
lisation which we can devise on political or on eco- 
nomic grounds, will not secure our great purpose 
unless we can change and mend the heart of man. 
Only then can peace be assured. We must first re- 
move the all-pervading force of envy and jealousy, 
leading to hatred, and ending in strife. I have stated 
elsewhere 2 that few people can forego the emotional 
luxury of hatred, of a pet aversion. The passion of 
envy among individuals and nations cannot be totally 
eradicated ; nor can the comparatively milder vice or 
weakness — kindred to envy and hatred — of vanity. 
I have endeavoured to show 3 how potent a factor was 
this national vanity in leading Germany into the war. 
Anyone daring to hope that he can totally eliminate 
these nefarious forces from the heart of individual 
man and the soul of nations would indeed be rash. 
But what we can do is, as far as possible, to remove 
the conditions favouring their growth and strengthen 
the forces arrayed against them. And we may hope, 

1 This book (The English-Speaking Brotherhood and the 
League of Nations — Cambridge University Press) has since 
appeared and has reached a second edition. 

2 Aristodemocracy, etc., p. 67 ; Jewish Question, etc. (2nd 
ed.), p. 12 ; Patriotism, etc., pp. 43 seq. 

3 Aristodemocracy, etc., p. 103; Patriotism, etc., pp. 3 6-4 1 . 




24 



by insisting upon those universal and potent qualities 
of human nature which war against these evil in- 
stincts in man and beast — or rather in the beast in 
man — and by establishing and strengthening the con- 
ditions which make for the dominance of humanity 
and justice, to control and overcome, even extirpate, 
the powers of evil. 

If this is so with politics, it is essen- 
tially so with civics. Civics must have 
before it a consciousness of what the 
individual man is in his relation to 
society, as composed of individual men, 
not primarily institutional men. These 
institutions are not ends in themselves. 

I had the privilege of attending several 
of Mr Farquharson's interesting and in- 
structive lectures on "The Foundations 
of Civics." In these he endeavoured to 
deduce the general principles of Civics 
from a study of the origin and develop- 
ment of human associations in the actual 
life of modern times and in the traces of 
their earlier development from all the 
conditions prevailing in the past, physical 
as well as social. Now, this is very useful 
scientific work, which he has pursued with 
much intelligence and discrimination. 
All the same I feel bound to warn him 



25 



and his sociological colleagues against 
the dangers of over-generalisation from 
incomplete and sometimes doubtful data 
which form the groundwork of their 
induction. There can be no doubt of 
the potential influence of physical and 
— in the widest sense— geographic con- 
ditions, as well as public and social con- 
ditions, in producing both the economical, 
political, and social associations of our 
modern civilised life. So also the broadly 
social and economical relationship of the 
"political animal" man — -so called by 
Aristotle — are effective moving factors 
in the production of the established " as- 
sociations" in our complex modern life. 
But I think it only right that I should 
convey a warning to him and his col- 
leagues in the study of Civics, and of 
the still wider department of study 
called Sociology, against over-generalisa- 
tion and, especially, against the one-sided 
exaggeration of the formative influence 
of such factors. I will illustrate my 
meaning by taking for criticism two 
definite examples from his lecture which 
I attended two days ago : 

26 



In his illustration of the supreme im- 
portance of the physical effect of a defxnite 
site upon the establishment of an indi- 
vidual industry for a district or town, he 
maintained that Oxford and Cambridge 
had become higher educational centres 
— which they actually were and are — 
chiefly, if not exclusively, because of 
their physical or geographical position. 
Now, I must express my grave doubts, 
if not directly deny, the correctness of 
this conclusion. So far from believing 
that both Oxford and Cambridge are 
naturally the proper places for a univer- 
sity, as regards locality and climate, I 
can hardly conceive of any places less 
suited to this purpose. The relaxing 
climate of Cambridge is only surpassed 
by that of Oxford as a place unfitted to 
develop the physical conditions favour- 
able to the life of a student. Those, who, 
like myself, have spent many years of 
residence here will agree with me that 
they have been severely handicapped in 
their work by these physical conditions. 
Many of us have found that we can only 
keep up the physical vitality and energy 

27 



for productive intellectual work by fre- 
quent recreation and changes of abode 
during our holidays. And not even their 
geographical position in the past, as re- 
gards the main arteries of communication 
in the ancient high-roads, are necessarily 
contributive to their suitability as centres 
of education and learning, inasmuch as 
it might be maintained that centres of 
higher learning are more properly placed 
in the quiet seclusion removed from the 
arteries of traffic. But it is equally true 
that for certain studies, like medicine 
and those immediately drawing their 
material from actual and practical life, 
the great centres, the metropolises, are 
most suitable and tend, as a matter of 
fact, in modern times to attract such 
studies to the capitals in every country 
and district. If, as regards my own ex- 
perience of universities in various parts 
of the world, I had to choose an es- 
pecially favoured site for those studies 
not directly concerned with the applied 
sciences of practical life, I would choose 
Cornell University in America on the 
gently rising and salubrious hill, its 

28 



bracing climate, and its beautiful land- 
scape view on all sides. No, I maintain 
that Oxford and Cambridge owe their 
development as higher centres of learn- 
ing to historical and not to physical, or 
even ethnological, causes. 

I must also say that, when he singled 
out Berlin as the centre for musical 
art, I am inclined to think that that 
city has never occupied such a promi- 
nent place. From Bach and Beethoven, 
Mozart and Haydn, Schubert and Schu- 
mann, Wagner and Brahms onwards, 
Berlin has never been a musical centre 
— in fact I do not believe that any 
great German musician has ever been a 
Prussian. The leading Prussians them- 
selves would probably deny to Mendels- 
sohn the ethnical title of Prussian. Of 
course the capitals of every state, with 
their great wealth and as centres of 
amusement, can often attract the most 
prominent representatives in all work of 
the mind to such local centres. In so 
far as this has been the case it has not 
been to the advantage of truly German 
Kultur^ nor has this been the case in 
other countries as well. 



29 



So also I am at issue with Mr 
Farquharson (including some of his 
sociological colleagues) when he, to my 
mind, exaggerated the importance of the 
simply utilitarian factor in the establish- 
ment of centres for the textile industries 
and, especially, when he swept aside, as 
unworthy of consideration in this respect, 
the mere question of "superfluous" adorn- 
ment in female attire— as not of import- 
ance in the true "civic" development 
of the textile industry. However im- 
portant the question of the immediate 
production of the basal materials in the 
making of yarns and cloths, their strength 
and durability, may doubtless be, as a 
matter of fact the "more frivolous" ele- 
ment of fashion, of taste (which may 
be very bad), of adornment and luxury, 
is one of the ruling and dominant factors 
in that modern industry. It is the 
weaving and dyeing of both cotton and 
woollen goods, their attractiveness to the 
purchaser in the patterns given to them, 
which may be the decisive factor in their 
economic value. Fashion and design 
may perhaps be the very soul of industry 
in a large number of modern goods, not 

3o 



to mention art-production and artistic 
craft. I venture to maintain — in spite 
of the great intrinsic and constraining 
value of durability of material — that 
two-thirds of the objects sold in our 
shops, and the consequent purchases 
there made, are meant directly to appeal, 
and do appeal, to the "luxury 5 ' side 
of life. Moreover, in highly civilised 
societies it is right that this should be 
so. I could perhaps convince you — 
though it would take more than one 
lecture — of the highly serious and moral 
aspect of this condition of things. But 
remember that we cannot return — nor 
could it be maintained that it is desirable 
that we should return — to the conditions 
of prehistoric life, when the conscious 
existence and efforts of prehistoric man 
were almost exclusively centred on pro- 
ducing the necessary food in its crudest 
and almost raw condition, and, having 
sated his hunger and provided himself 
with bearskins to protect himself against 
cold, he could crawl into his cave or 
wattle-hut and sleep in security, I repeat, 
that two-thirds of our actual industries 



3i 



are in great part directed towards the 
satisfaction of what might be called the 
aesthetic side of life; and this side and 
these desires are to be satisfied, not only 
in order in themselves to respond to the 
aesthetic instinct and spirit, but also to 
the moral and social aspect arising out of 
them. The poorest wife of the most 
unskilled labourer chooses the stuffs she 
needs, even the food required, from 
motives transcending the more immediate 
necessity of physical existence ; still 
more so when she purchases any article 
of furniture for her home, even of the 
humblest and most necessary class. The 
chair, table, teapot and plate which 
commends itself to her "taste" and de- 
cides her selection in purchase is that 
which has the best shape and most at- 
tractive decoration. She does not only 
do this because of the immediate satis- 
faction of her taste (a highly commend- 
able moral reason) but because of the 
satisfaction of a most important motive in 
social ethics which is at the very founda- 
tion of social intercourse and progress. 
This motive is to secure the approval 



32 



and esteem, if not the admiration, of 
her neighbours and fellow-beings. Re- 
member, that within certain cogent 
limitations, upon which I need not dwell 
now, it is right for women, and even for 
men, to wish to make themselves look 
"pretty" and to attract the approval of 
those with whom they come in contact. 
And even if there were no such fellow- 
beings to be thus affected — even if we 
lived on a desert island — it would be 
right for us to make ourselves and our 
surroundings as beautiful and attractive 
as we know how to do this. Self-respect 
and the esteem of our neighbours are as 
fundamental as they are high motives in 
social life. 

I am now coming to the main point 
of this lecture when I maintain that for 
Civics, as well as Eugenics, Ethics forms 
the fundamental foundation. The students 
of both these studies must turn to the 
widely moral consideration of individual 
man and solve the essential problems 
concerning his character, life and aims 
before they solve, and in order that 
they should solve, the chief problems of 



w. 



their own study. However important 
man's relation to the widest, as well as 
narrowest, social "associations" may be, 
and however essential it undoubtedly is 
that every citizen in a modern democracy 
ought, from the elementary school up- 
wards, to be made intelligently familiar 
with the institutions and practices of his 
own country and locality, with the national 
constitution and with local government, 
there remains thorough knowledge of 
the relationship of man to himself and 
to his neighbours as a moral and social 
individual, regarding his fellow-beings as 
individuals and his intercourse with them 
as that of individuals to one another, and 
not merely in their relationship to u asso- 
ciations," before he can study with truth 
and profit these wider relationships. 

We can no more make "associations" 
an end in themselves than the State of 
Hegel or Treitschke could be made such 
with due regard to truth and the welfare 
of humanity; though both are based upon, 
and are destined for, the right develop- 
ment of individual men and women and 
of their lives. 



34 



But the question remains : What is the 
perfect man as well as his perfect life to 
be ? We are bound to solve this question 
and to make the goal of ethics, as well 
as of civics and eugenics, clear in this 
fundamental principle underlying all 
sociology. Yet, we at once find that the 
conception of this ethical goal or ideal 
varies in the different periods of history. 
They are subject to evolution, though 
"conscious evolution"; and this "con- 
scious" evolution — as we have seen be- 
fore — is not purely "causal" but "teleo- 
logical." For it is concerned with beings 
possessed of wills, intelligence, morality 
and imagination. Each period must 
therefore, above all, clearly establish its 
own ethical standards, which must in 
their turn again be progressive. Civics 
must rely on, and turn back to, ethics 
for an answer to the question: "What 
is the perfect man and what is his perfect 
life?" Eugenics, after having duly con- 
sidered the most important conditions of 
producing a healthy race and stamping 
out the continuance of disease and de- 
generation must always remember that 

c z 



in social life the physical end depends 
upon the moral and that its ultimate aim 
is not to produce the "blond beast. 55 

I thus come finally to the chief object 
which I have set before myself in de- 
livering this lecture : it is to insist upon 
the most pressing need of our time, 
namely, to organise and develop the 
study of ethics on an equal footing with 
all other great inductive studies, governed 
by the same spirit, and by adopting the 
same methods of research and teaching. 
I even think that it would be advan- 
tageous to substitute for the denomina- 
tion of such study the term "Ethology 55 
instead of Ethics. As I have endeavoured 
to show elsewhere 1 , the study of ethics, 
as hitherto pursued by the philosopher, 
has chiefly, if not exclusively, been con- 
cerned with the establishment and dis- 
cussion of the fundamental principles of 
all ethics on a more or less deductive or, 
at most, psychological groundwork. In 
the future I hope that those best qualified 
to carry out this work will be concerned 
with the study of actual man as a social 

1 See Aristodemocracy, etc., pp. 256 seq. 

36 



being and with the actual social life of 
the past and present as well as the future. 
Please remember that the philosopher 
Kant, after he had concluded his Critique 
of Pure Reason, turned to the Critique of 
Practical Reason, which latter contained 
his ethics. 

As with most studies, we shall be 
concerned with two main aspects of the 
subject, namely, (i) that of the pure 
researcher, and (ii) that of the practical 
teacher. The groundwork and justifica- 
tion for the development of such a new 
department of truly scientific work, to 
be carried on as systematically and con- 
scientiously as the biologist deals with 
his problems, is the simple, though com- 
prehensive and all-important, fact, that 
ethical theory and practice — the standards 
of right and wrong — have varied in the 
different periods of man's history and that, 
even in the present, they are essentially 
modified by dominant traditions, syste- 
matic or unsystematic education, of indi- 
viduals and classes, localities and occupa- 
tions in actual life and for all communities 
as well as for mankind as a whole — 



37 



especially in the development of modern 
democratic society. It is of paramount 
importance — in fact it is essential to 
the rightness of social life — that the 
ultimate ideals be clearly formulated for 
each period with the logical promise of 
progress in the future. 

I am sure that with this audience I 
hardly need insist upon the fact that 
our ethical conceptions have varied and 
have undergone a process of change in 
the recognisable history of the past. 
Consider merely what has been the change 
in our conception of "honour," not only 
in the remote past, but even a few 
generations ago, when the grandfathers 
of some of us would have considered it 
their duty to set right the wrong done to 
their "honour" by going out to Chalk 
Farm on the chance of shooting their 
opponent or being shot themselves. I 
must, by the way, tell you that, in more 
than one "highly civilised" community 
on the Continent, I have met the most 
perfect representatives of cultured society 
who have seriously asked me: "How 
can you gentlemen of England and 

38 



America get on without the duel ? 55 I 
must also remind you of the fact that, 
while there has been in the past a 
marked change in the conception of 
"business honesty and honour 55 as the 
communities rose from a state of petty 
barter to the larger business transactions 
in which dependence upon the mere 
written or spoken word of the parties 
was essential to any business procedure. 
Even in our own days and in our own 
country, you will be bound to admit, that 
the conceptions of business honesty and 
fairness differ with definite occupations 
and that the recognised traditions of 
dealing in horses and in "antiques," in 
which the value of articles is in no way 
fixed while in others it is publicly es- 
tablished and known, the traditions do 
not follow the same standards. 

So too you will all recognise that in 
the relation between men and women 
our moral practices, or at least our 
precepts and ideals, have vastly altered 
and are even now in an acute state of 
flux and, let us hope, of sane and bene- 
ficent development. The not very re- 



39 



mote legislation resulting in the Married 
Women's Settlement Act has, in some 
respects, done more actual good than a 
long series of political bills over which 
so much time has been, and is being, 
wasted, in parliamentary activity, I can- 
not refrain from expressing my own hope, 
that many of the problems regulating sex- 
morality, as well as their direct bearing 
upon physical eugenics, the solution of 
which appeared to many philanthropic 
and public-spirited men as remote, if not 
hopeless, are now promising in their out- 
look, because, while we have hitherto faced 
them exclusively as men, the direct co- 
operation of women will now lead to their 
ultimate, if not rapid, solution. All this 
change in the whole purview of social 
life is produced by this glorious period 
of ours in which — whatever grave and 
depressing mistakes may be made by the 
women in this early stage of their emanci- 
pation — woman has come into her rights. 

In another and equally important sphere 
of modern life we are also giving birth 
— with all the consequent and distressing 
labours of such birth — to the establish- 



40 



ment of a new ethical relationship between 
the employers and employed. At last it is 
being recognised that these ethical factors 
are essential to the sane and rational de- 
velopment of economical life and pros- 
perity. 

In fact the great change which marks 
the development of Political Economy in 
our time, compared with the period 
when the Manchester School reigned 
supreme, is the recognition of the ethical 
factor as equivalent to others which have 
hitherto been considered the only truly 
active co-efficients in economical phe- 
nomena or the only ones to be considered 
by the economist. If this admission of 
ethics marks the great and characteristic 
change in Modern Economics, we may 
hope that in the future a further step will 
be taken and Aesthetics (in the widest 
acceptation of that term) will be equally 
admitted as an important factor in sane 
Political Economy 1 . 

1 I may even venture, at the risk of appearing to enun- 
ciate a great, if not an absurd, paradox, to say that the day 
may come when truth will be reduced to an aesthetic prin- 
ciple. 

41 



Allow me, finally, to relate a homely in- 
cident of my own experience which may 
be pertinently illustrative of the point I 
wish to impress. Some years ago, when I 
resided at Athens as the Director of the 
American Archaeological School and kept 
house there, I received notice from some 
friends travelling in Egypt that they were 
arriving by steamer at the Piraeus shortly 
and begging me to help them to find suit- 
able quarters. I at once despatched my 
old and trusted Greek butler, Costi, with 
orders that he should proceed to the 
Piraeus and, if needs be, stay till the 
next day until the Egyptian boat arrived 
and bring the party to my house as my 
guests. He was obliged to stay the 
night at the Piraeus and finally arrived 
with my friends. When, after the first 
greetings, they found themselves com- 
fortably established in my house, they 
thanked me warmly for my reception and 
insisted that they should repay the ex- 
penses I had incurred through my servant. 
I agreed to this, on condition that, while 
they should pay for all expenditure by 
old "Costi" the moment he arrived at 



42 



the ship's side in the rowing-boat — in- 
cluding porterage, carriages, etc. — his ex- 
penses before that moment only concerned 
me. I accordingly ordered the servant 
to make out two separate bills for them 
and for me. This he did and duly pre- 
sented them to us. As a mere matter of 
curiosity I asked them to show me their 
bill, when, to my astonishment and horror, 
I found that every item was charged to 
them double and treble the price I usually 
paid. I then ordered him up to my 
study alone and indignantly charged him 
with dishonesty, calling him a rogue and 
swindler. He stood pale and petrified at 
this insult. "Have I not always dealt 
honestly by you, Sir ? " he said with voice 
trembling with emotion. " Have I not 
fought with all the tradesmen to save you 
every penny I could for all these years ? 
And now you insult me like this!' 5 I 
answered: "I did trust you all this time 
and was grateful to you for your fidelity to 
me ; but I can no longer trust you, since you 
have treated these people, my guests, as 
you have done." "But," he replied with 
his characteristic gesture, bowing for- 



43 



wards with his hands to his chest and 
then removing them downwards in a 
sweep, "those are strangers, Sir." To 
make a long story short, I found it im- 
possible to convince him that there was 
no difference as regards honesty between 
me and them — in fact to recognise any 
abstract or general duty to honesty. He 
was too old and set in his mentality to 
alter his whole view of life and morals, 
and I could only persuade him not to 
repeat such an offence by winning him 
over to another point of view: that every- 
body who stayed in my house as my guest 
in so far belonged to my family. This he 
could understand and promised me to act 
accordingly. 

This anecdote illustrates an important 
principle of ethology, the study of evo- 
lutionary ethics. With old Costi and with 
people in that phase of ethical develop- 
ment the sole avenue towards general and 
abstract principles of conduct is the emo- 
tions, especially the affections. Fidelity 
and loyalty are the supreme and all-domi- 
nating virtues. Many a party-politician 
stands on the same level of civic morality. 

44 



The highest and the essential quality ap- 
pealing toapolitician of the old Tammany 
Hall order was summarised in the phrase : 
"He stands by his friends. 55 And many 
a "patriot 55 has reached no higher stage 
in ethical development. It has been a 
common-place to say that woman, taken 
as a whole, is not so capable of being 
appealed to by more general and more 
abstract principles as is man, and that her 
outlook on public affairs "will always be 
guided by personal affection, admiration 
and similar considerations. 55 Even in the 
most intellectual and purely dispassionate 
occupation, such as the pursuit of science, 
it has been remarked that distinguished 
votaries among women are inclined to 
favour a more passionate and partisan 
attitude, or will readily make them- 
selves the militant champions of one 
outstanding figure who represents a 
definite direction in scientific work, while 
men will not be thus swayed by personal 
issues. Even if this generalisation were 
justified our answer would be : that her 
intellectual education, as bearing upon 
her ethical outlook and practice has 
hitherto been defective, and that, with 



45 



the complete reform of her education 
long since initiated, this fault may be 
mitigated, if not completely reformed. 

However, I cannot refrain from quali- 
fying the implied censure of the personal 
emotional attitude of mind which has 
been attributed to women. The Defauts 
de ses qualites here implied have, as quali- 
ties, certain educational and social advan- 
tages which must not be overlooked. The 
development of the affections which may 
produce a personally emotional attitude, 
at times out of place, is of supreme value 
in the development of social and moral 
human beings. I may take this occasion 
to suggest that, with whatever justice it 
may be claimed that certain conditions 
of parental life — especially with the 
poorer people and with the rich and 
worldly who have no time to spare for 
the care and education of their children 
— are less likely to produce good educa- 
tional results than where children are 
handed over to institutions and the care of 
qualified nurses and teachers, who follow 
their noble pursuit because they feel fitness 
for such a vocation — that, in spite of this, 
the fact remains that we cannot forego the 

46 



supremely important element of natural 
affection inherent in motherhood and in 
all intimate family relationships. The 
ideals which led to the organisation of the 
Spartan State-education of children may 
possibly produce a certain form of " super- 
man/' but not the social beings who cor- 
respond to our ideals of life, private and 
public. Moreover, it is important to 
remember that the direct cultivation of 
the emotions which develop the imagina- 
tion — directly leading to art and religion 
in the widest sense of these terms — also 
gives imaginative and emotional form to 
the human will, to the human soul. The 
normal human being cannot do without 
these spiritual forces. If I am right in 
the definition I have ventured to give of 
religion ("that man is religious only in 
the degree in which ultimate ideals are 
real to him 55 ), then the directness and 
potency with which such ideals pass 
through the imagination into our emotions 
and produce an ethos, a sub-conscious 
habit of mind, becomes one of the great- 
est assets of the human character and one 
of the most important aims of education. 
Among such ideals, of course, the more 



47 



general and abstract ethical laws are un- 
doubtedly included. 

I have recently published a monograph 
on Truth — an Essay in Moral Recon- 
struction^ in which I have endeavoured 
to show the marked change and advance 
in the conception of that essential requi- 
site of ethical life from the earlier periods 
to our own day, the inadequacy of our 
standards in the present and the crying 
need for reform for the future. For there 
can be no doubt that our conception of 
Truth, as revealed in the lives of all 
classes of modern communities, has not 
kept pace with that of other qualities of 
our moral life. I have endeavoured to 
impress the necessity of a correct formula- 
tion of these standards and, above all, of 
effectually teaching such high principles 
of conduct in our elementary and secon- 
dary schools where the need of truthful- 
ness is in no way adequately impressed 
and where often the only practical method 
of developing the sense of truth and 
justice upon the less-educated people of 
our communities is through the national 
idea of fair-play in our national sports. • 

The great task before us now is to 

4 8 



formulate clearly our present ethical stan- 
dards in every aspect of our life. In the 
first instance, there will be the task of 
the special students, the philosophers, 
psychologists, sociologists, social histo- 
rians, the careful and conscientious ob- 
servers of the facts of ethical life in the 
past and in the present, to establish our 
ethical standards by means of methods 
which will be as careful and systematic as 
are those of the students of nature in all 
the inductive sciences of modern times. 
There will undoubtedly be many argu- 
ments and much controversy among the 
authorities dealing with such questions 
as regards the past and the present. Yet 
such difference of opinion is the life of all 
enquiry and science. But the ultimate re- 
sult will be the establishment of a residuum 
of facts and inductive truths which will 
lead to the codification of ethical tenets 
and standards in every period and country, 
and with especial urgency in our own 
times. A further and most important 
result of such enquiry will be the realisa- 
tion of the changes in the conception of 
the perfect man in the various periods of 
human history and, above all, in our own 

w. d 



days. Such special enquiry by qualified 
specialists will lead to active and helpful 
discussion of the ethical aspect of phases 
in our actual life which are thus in a state 
of flux and growth — such, for instance, 
as the problem of commercial and indus- 
trial morality — which will give vitality 
to enquiry and have direct bearing upon 
the formation of public opinion. 

But the establishment of our ethical 
code will not only be limited to the ex- 
amination and establishment of those 
broader moral duties 1 to which the terms 
"morals 55 and "morality" have been 
more exclusively applied ; but they will 
also be concerned with the "social life 
of the surface," which, so far from being 
superficial, penetrates deeply into the 
moral and social life of every period and 
of every community. 

Thus in establishing, through the 
principle of "conscious evolution," what 
we can best call the ideal of the gentle- 
man, the perfect human being, for each 
period, we shall be bound to go beyond 
the deeper legal and moral requisites to 
those qualities which directly bear on the 

1 Truth, pp. 4 seq.; Aristodemocracy, etc., pp. 200 seq. 

50 



social intercourse between individuals in 
civilised communities, as they also have 
a potent, if not so direct, a bearing upon 
self-respect in the individual. The gen- 
tleman will not only be law-abiding and 
public-spirited, but he will also be a well- 
educated man. He will, without being 
a dabbler in all subjects, develop in him- 
self intellectual sympathy and interest in 
every department of human thought. 
The "distinguished dowager" who, at 
a dinner-party began her conversation 
with the historian Lecky, by asking him 
what he did or cared for, and, when he in- 
formed her that he was a historian and 
asked her whether she was interested in 
history, replied : " No. I always say c Let 
by-gones be by-gones'" — this dowager 
was not representative of the type of a 
"lady," the complement of our gentle- 
man. Whatever her qualifications to social 
eminence may have been in other re- 
spects, she was distinctly wanting in the 
development of one essential attainment 
of a representative man or woman in 
our civilised communities, namely, that 
they should keep abreast with the higher 
intellectual, moral and artistic achieve- 

5i 



ments of their country and their age. 
Let me repeat: this does not mean su- 
perficiality, dabbling with knowledge, 
sciolism ; it does not produce insincere 
pretentiousness to knowledge we do not 
thoroughly possess ; it does not create the 
prig and the humbug— it produces true 
intellectual sympathy with true modesty. 
As was said by Terence, Homo sum; 
humani nihil a me alienum puto (Human 
I am ; I consider nothing human foreign 
to me), so the true gentleman will say, 
intelligibile nihil a me alienum puto. " No 
great intellectual achievement, no great 
work of art, no beneficent movement in 
the world of individual or civic morality 
is foreign to me — I dare not be indifferent 
to the spiritual life about me or out of 
sympathy with it." We can never claim 
omniscience; on the contrary, the more 
intense this intellectual sympathy of ours, 
the more are we alive to our own limita- 
tions compared with the vastness of true 
science and art, the more sincere our hu- 
mility and our reverence. Let me give you 
but one instance : I had the privilege of 
being present at the lecture of Professor 
Punnett on the subject of Mendelism, 



52 



as well as at the lectures of some repre- 
sentatives of biometric research for which 
my friend Professor Pearson has done so 
much. Well, we must have been struck 
by the wonderful evidence which the 
small feathers in the wing of a fowl 
furnished for sound Mendelian generali- 
sation, as also the complicated facts re- 
sulting from higher statistical and mathe- 
matical methods of the researcher. Not 
one of us, I am sure, would think or 
act as if he were an esoteric researcher in 
these domains of higher science or really 
knew much about its problems. But this 
we did learn and this we know now, 
namely, the great problems before them, 
and the methods applied to solve them ; 
we have cleared up what were vague and 
confused notions about the problem of 
heredity; we have really clarified and eco- 
nomised thought for ourselves, and we are 
satisfied to be unpretentious and modest. 
We should never say that any important 
department of study or art is foreign to 
us and that "we do not care about it." 

To be a gentleman is not a question of 
class, it is a question of morals, character, 
culture, conduct and manners. A gentle- 



man will have good manners ; and good 
manners, allow me to insist, have their 
groundwork, their rationale^ in deeply 
social principles. The gentleman will 
take due care (and of course I include the 
female counterpart, the much abused 
term "lady") of his personal appearance, 
not only from a purely hygienic point of 
view. I remember many years ago hearing 
George Eliot dwell upon the importance 
of "putting on their Sunday-best" on 
the manners and morals of the labouring 
classes. This, she maintained, went far to 
prevent them from acting and speaking 
coarsely. I hold that the habit of "dress- 
ing for dinner" (which includes washing 
and changing one's working-dress in every 
class of life) is one of the greatest national 
assets in the life of the British people. 
May it never die out. 

I have advisedly chosen these rather 
light and superficial instances to insist 
upon the comprehensiveness of the study 
of ethics, including as it does the whole 
life of social intercourse. 

Now, the study of Ethology in the 
past, the establishment of our code of 



54 



conduct in the present and our social 
ideals for the future will be the task of 
the special ethologist. His work will at 
least present us with a body of definite 
standards which will be beyond contro- 
versy, to which every class and every sect 
of religion will necessarily subscribe. The 
next and all-important task w r ill be that 
in our schools, as in our homes, the young 
will be definitely instructed in this code, 
which every competent teacher, including 
of course the priests of all denominations, 
will be able and qualified to do. Let no 
one say that the mere teaching of what 
is right of itself makes man act rightly. 
On the other hand, no one will dare to 
maintain that our children are to be 
brought up without having been in some 
way familiarised with the universally ad- 
mitted standards of right and wrong of our 
own times, adequately and clearly expres- 
sive of such modern moral needs. More- 
over, the proper methods of teaching will 
be by vivid illustration from the actual life 
which appeals to them and by methods 
which go beyond the intellect, touch the 
emotions and the imagination, and fami- 
liarise them with these tenets to such a 



55 



degree that they produce an ethos, a mental 
habit, in them from their earliest years up- 
wards. The simple injunction or correc- 
tion which in our early days many of us 
have received when our teacher reproved 
us by saying : "A gentleman does not do 
that kind of thing " has produced a lasting 
effect on our lives and we owe him a 
debt of gratitude. What I insist upon 
with conviction and with all the emphasis 
which I can give, is the need of clear 
formulation of our current ethical code, 
the establishment of our ideal of the per- 
fect man and woman and the teaching of 
such practical ethics in all our schools and 
homes. Eugenics, as well as Civics, are 
bound to take cognisance of these ethical 
needs and the co-operation of all these 
three departments of study and practice 
must produce an organic whole which 
will conduce to the welfare of man, as 
such a synthesis corresponds to make of 
all three departments of social science a 
true and effective contribution to human 
knowledge. In any case, Eugenics as 
well as Civics must take cognisance of 
Ethology. 



Cambridge: printed by j. b. peace, m.a., at the university press 



BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



Aristodemocracy : From the Great War back to 

Moses, Christ, and Plato. John Murray; Longmans, Green & 
Co., New York. 

" Few of the many books which the war has called forth merit more 
careful consideration. . . . His long and varied experience, his scholar- 
ship, his residence in foreign countries, including Germany, give great 
weight to his judgments on men and affairs. We know no recently 
published book which will do more to stimulate this social sense." — The 
Times, June i, 191 6. 

"As a positive expression of what we must continue to call the 
Hellenic Spirit, this brilliantly reasoned sequel to The Expansion of 
Western Ideals and the World's Peace will unquestionably rank as one 
of the most truly hopeful works which the war has produced. The 
practical quality of Sir C. Walston's idealism, etc. 5 ' — New York Ti?nes, 
August 26, 191 7. 

"The distinguished author traces the causes of the war, formulates 
the need of a fresh conception of morals, states the duty of the citizen 
in the present crisis, and outlines a scheme for an International Council, 
backed by force, for the maintenance of peace. ... It is a reason for 
thankfulness that the fruit of a mind so judicial, so well equipped, 
should be issued in a cheap yet complete form." — Glasgow Herald, 
July 24, 19 1 7. 

Patriotism: National and International. Longmans, 

Green & Co. 

"Sir Charles Waldstein in his book, Patriotism, etc., delivers such a 
rebuke to Chauvinism as one would expect from a man of his cosmopol- 
itan outlook and broadly cultivated sympathies. An American by birth 
and education, Sir Charles Waldstein has long been eminent as an 
archaeologist and teacher of art at the English Cambridge. As long ago 
as 1898 he advocated an American coalition, believing that England and 
the United States were the 'two civilised powers' best fitted by existing 
circumstances 'to draw nearer to each other.'" — Springfield Republican, 
Jan. 10, 1918. 

Patriotism and What Germany is Fighting For. 

"Anything Sir C. W. writes on the disturbing problems of the hour 
deserves attentive scrutiny because of his wide and diversified knowledge 
of social and international politics. His pen has kept pace with events. 
Two recent works : What Ger?nany is Fighti?ig For and Patriotism, etc., 
following closely his notable Aristodemocracy, have emerged in book form 
above the large volume of his contributions to periodicals. The fact that 
one of these appears in paper covers at a price of sixty cents does not 
diminish its importance. "—Carroll X. Michener in The Bellman, 
Minneapolis, Feb., 1918. 



What Germany is Fighting For. Longmans, Green 
& Co. 

4 'These papers show with absolute clearness the reasons for which 
Germany provoked, and is still engaged in carrying on, the world's war, 
as well as the undoubted responsibility, not only of the German Govern- 
ment, but of the majority of the German people for the War." — The 
Daily Telegraph , July 20, 191 7. 

"His book constitutes an important war document." — Punch, 

The Next War: Wilsonism and Anti-Wilsonism. 

Camb. Univ. Press. 

<{ Prefaced with an open letter rebuking Mr Roosevelt for his disbelief 
in a League of Nations as a panacea ; this spirited pamphlet examines 
the objections raised to Mr Wilson's proposals, and urges that one need 
not be a Bolshevik or a Pacifist to approve of them." — Spectator^ 
Nov. 9, 1918. 

Truth: An Essay in Moral Reconstruction. Camb. 

Univ. Press. 

"This is a book pitched in a noble key. A book to put into the hands 
of the 6th-form schoolboy, and of the politician that now is, of the 
Statesman yet to be. Seriousness is not the key-note of our age ; we 
have the cinema habit, the paragraph passion. Thought is a bore and 
rarely encouraged. Well-balanced judgment is our wash-pot, over 
accuracy do we cast our shoe. But if anyone will give half an hour from 
his newspaper to the study of the opening of this book, we shall be 
surprised if that half-hour is not extended until the end, to the moral 
and material benefit of the reader. . . . All who desire to cultivate in 
themselves and in their children a sense of the importance of truth, 
which is clear thinking, a readiness to face the issues of life — uncoloured 
by emotion, sentiment, or prepossession — should read a book like this, a 
manual of ethics in the highest sense. " — Saturday Review, Sept. 27, 1919. 

" Truth is even more powerful a plea for a fresh revaluation of morals 
than is the preceding volume (Aristodemocracy), and in its brilliant 
reasoning and cogency of message, to say nothing of its urbanity and 
delicacy of style, is an important contribution to the literature of modern 
ethics." — San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 1919. 

" Que je regrette de ne pouvoir traduire ici les cinq chapitres qu'il 
a consacres dans un de ses ouvrages a l'examen critique du journal et 
du journalisme ! Comme il expose lucidement le tort fait a la culture, 
a la verite, a la bonne foi par les mceurs journalistiques d'aujourd'hui ! 
Comme il excelle a faire valoir Tinformation veritable, qui est d'acquisi- 
tion lente et de ton mesure ! Comme il stigmatise la hate, l'unilateralite, 
le sensationalisme des quotidiens a grand tirage ! II conclut son etude 



par un desir vehement d'assister a une 'reconstruction' du journalisme, 
a la fois du dehors par TEtat et du dedans par les professionnels ! " — 
Rene Johannet, Les Lettres, April I, 1920. 

"As a practical idealist, whose Aristode??iocracy was one of the wisest 
books begotten of the war, he seeks to point out to the politician, the 
millionaire, the journalist, the ecclesiastic, how best they may fulfil their 
function in the State. . . . His essay will repay careful study, and should 
exercise a helpful influence in the reconstruction of public life and 
conduct." — The Scotsman, May 1, 1919. 

"Are we a truthful people? Is there a declension in this virtue? "What 
are the new temptations to mendacity? What professions and callings 
are chiefly affected by it ? Sir Charles Walston discusses these questions 
with a sense of their gravity and with a keen eye for the presence of the 
weaknesses which he deplores. " — The Times, June 12, 19 19. 

"Sir Charles W r alston's Truth; An Essay in Moral Reconstruction , 
is a book of absorbing interest. . . . It is distinctly a thought-provoking 
work and deserves wide circulation.'' — The Hindustan ReviriV, March, 
1920. 

The English- Speaking Brotherhood and the League 

of Nations. Camb. Univ. Press; Col. Univ. Press, New York. 

"In these troublous times it is hard to predict what a day may bring 
forth. An analysis of the situation to-day may be of little good to-morrow. 
Thousands of books that appear wise and learned when issued are thrown 
into the discard almost as soon as they leave the press. This will probably 
not be the case with Sir Charles W T alston's work. It is too scholarly and 
based on principles too fundamental to be lightly regarded. Contrary to 
many serious and thoughtful writers on social and political problems, he 
holds to definitions on nationality and internationality which are markedly 
sound and rational. He discusses the expansion of Western ideals and 
the world's peace with intelligence, and argues with vigor for a Super- 
national Court, backed by power. He recognises the difficulties in the 
way of his scheme, but presses on with true British persistency." — Boston 
Evening Transcript, April i 3 1920. 

"Sir Charles Walston, if he thought it worth while, might claim to 
rank among the prophets, for though some of the essays which compose 
this volume date from as far back as the Spanish- American War, they 
reflect by anticipation views which are leading ideas in the world of 
international affairs at the present moment. These views are underlined 
in the essays of post-war date. ... As one who has a first-hand 
knowledge of the problems and interests of both hemispheres, Sir 
Charles Walston writes from wide experience, and also with pregnancy 
of thought." — The Scotsman, Oct. 6, 1919. 

" Sir Charles W 7 alston has rendered a public service by his The English- 
Speaking Brotherhood, He reprints the suggestive address he delivered 



\3> 

in 1898. The volume also contains more recent pieces, including a 
powerful defence of the League of Nations. Perhaps the most funda- 
mental principles of these essays is that the peace of the world can be 
secured only through 'the closer understanding and co-operation be- 
tween the great English-speaking democracies.'" — The Daily Graphic^ 
Oct. 10, 1919. 

' 4 This volume is an effort to meet the demand for a republication of 
the author's The Expansion of Western Ideals and the World's Peace, 
now out of print, which anticipated the foundation of a League of Nations 
and also looked to this consummation primarily through the intervention 
of the United States in the world's affairs, and especially through the 
closer understanding and co-operation between the two English-speaking 
democracies." — The Glasgow Herald. 

"Sir C. Walston can be congratulated on having published a book 
that is bound to stimulate discussion, and thereby to render a service to 
the cause we have at heart." — E.S.K. in The Covenant, Oct., 1919. 



OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL 
The Political Confession of a Practical Idealist. — 

A Pamphlet. (John Murray, 19 11.) 

The Expansion of Western Ideals and the World's 
Peace. — 1899. 

The Balance of Emotion and Intellect. — 1878. 
What May We Read. No. iv of the Ethics of the Surface 

Series. — 1897. (John Murray, 191 7.) 

The Jewish Question and the Mission of the Jews. 

— 1894. (Harper & Brothers.) 

WORKS ON ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 

Essays on the Art of Pheidias (Camb. Univ. Press, 
1885); The Work of John Ruskin (Harper & Brothers, 1893); 
The Study of Art in Universities (Macmillan & Co. and Harper & 
Brothers, 1896) ; The Argive Heraeum (with others) (Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., 1902-1905); Art ki the Nineteenth Century (Camb. 
Univ. Press, 1903); Herculaneum: Past, Present, and Future 
(with Leonard Shoobridge) (Macmillan & Co., 1908); Greek 
Sculpture and Modern Art (Camb. Univ. Press, 19 13). 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



